The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced exponential growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation.
In semiconductor technologies, image sensors are used for sensing a volume of exposed light projected towards the semiconductor substrate. Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor devices are widely used in various applications such as digital still camera (DSC) applications. These devices utilize an array of active pixels or image sensor cells, including photodiode elements and MOS transistors, to collect photo energy to convert images to streams of digital data.